Two Churchill College undergrads took centre stage at Cambridge’s most prestigious band competition last week. Ellen McLaughlin and Susanna Tredinnick, both third-year students, performed with their band ‘Hot Content’ in the grand finale of Take it to the Bridge 2025 at The Junction on Friday, March 7th.
The 10-piece function band competed against three other acts in front of a live audience and distinguished judges, including BBC Radio 1’s Matt Fincham and legendary bass guitarist Yolanda Charles MBE.
Hot Content, which formed in summer 2022, has deep roots in Churchill College’s musical community. The band emerged as an offshoot of Churchill Jazz Band, with founding members seeking to create a function band that specialised in more complex arrangements of popular songs. The band performs modern dance tracks and 2010s pop songs with innovative arrangements created by band members themselves.
“After watching Hot Content perform in my first year, I was really keen to get involved,” says Ellen, a History and Politics student from Cardiff. “I enjoy playing high-energy sets with the horn lines adding great sound to well-known songs.”
Ellen credits Churchill College’s Welsh outreach programme for introducing her to the supportive community she now calls home. “I’ve made some of my best friends at Churchill and I love being able to live here with them. There are plenty of events each term that we get to enjoy together, and I really appreciate all the outdoor space we have in the summer.”
For Susanna, an Earth Sciences student from Hertfordshire, the journey to Hot Content represents an unexpected evolution in her musical career. With classical training since age four, she initially planned to focus on orchestral music at Cambridge.
“I come from a completely classical background,” Susanna explains. “I first started learning instruments at 4 years old, starting on the clarinet. It was only when I reached sixth form when I was simply given a tenor saxophone for free by my school that I started to experiment a little more with jazz and branch out into big band genres!”
Now serving as president of Churchill Jazz Band, Susanna joined Hot Content after purchasing her own tenor saxophone before her second year. “The band is as tight a friend group as it was when I first met them as a fresher and we have so much fun playing around with new arrangements together and coming up with new and innovative ways to make a better performance.”
The band qualified for the Take it to the Bridge finals after auditioning at the Centre of Music Performance last term, performing two songs for a panel of judges. The competition offers student musicians a rare opportunity to perform at a professional venue and potentially win a recording session – a significant prize that would be costly for students to organise independently.
Hot Content has been building momentum through performances at college bops, society balls, and charity gigs. They prepared a special set list for the finals showcasing individual talents and comprising some of the most impressive mashups their members have arranged.
Both students praise Churchill College’s vibrant musical community. The College hosts various musical events each term, and its music centre provides essential rehearsal space. The open mic nights in the buttery regularly reveal the depth of talent within the college.
“I find the music scene in Cambridge very supportive,” says Susanna. “Many musicians have formed a community where everyone is encouraging of each other’s endeavours to start new and innovative groups or try out new music and put on more alternative events.”
The competition also featured remarkable performances from fellow finalists Iona Luke, Garbhán McEnoy, and Postbox, all of whom received high praise from the judges. The eventual winner was Iona Luke and her band, but Ellen and Susanna’s musical journey at Churchill College has already hit all the right notes and their experience of playing in the final was fantastic.
“It was such a fun night with such a supportive audience and so many other musicians watching,” Ellen reflects. “We were all excited to be playing a solid set we had worked hard on, and we had put unusual effort into our outfits, so we were ready to go all out. We had really enjoyed watching the acts before us, so we were very excited to get on stage and have fun with our performance.”
Both Ellen and Susanna are looking forward to continuing to play with Hot Content, which has more gigs planned for the summer including a couple of weddings!
